How to write a systematic literature review
Posted on 10. Feb. 2021
Extended version of this text firstly appeared in DOBA Faculty's PhD course: Technological Change, Globalisation and Society
Conducting a systematic literature review is one of the first and the most basic tasks when you’re preparing your thesis.
Sir Isaac Newton in his letter to Robert Hooke in 1676 said: “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants”.
A research methodology called systematic literature review consists of activities: searching for academic literature related to your topic, using academic search engines, building personal database of the research literature, reading research reports, scholarly and academic articles, citing, quoting, paraphrasing, writing structured comparative literature review and using reference management software.
The broad view
Let’s say your research topic is related to the (digitalization) of the health services. Firstly (before you start with your own research) you should get a broad overview of the state of the art from the secondary resources.
Example: if your research topic is related to health, you can investigate eHealth related DESI reports, eHealth digital single market policies
If you research the topic ‘Digital single market’, you can deep dive and review the areas and subtopics:
Examples of areas: supercomputing, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, advanced digital skills
Examples of more specific topics: 5G, Artificial intelligence, Cloud Computing, Connecting Europe Facility, Internet of Things, Next Generation Internet, Robotics, Wireless Europe
A task: Write a short summary from the EU and your country perspective. 200 words max.
Narrowing the view
Now that you researched your topic broadly it is time to deep dive into it and check out what the other researchers have written about it. Your task in this assignment is to search for appropriate academic literature and make a list of it.
Your first literature review report will consist of the search process and the results (no summarizing yet).
Academic research of the related literature differs from an every-day web search. Instead of popular search engines (Google, Bing), you will use specialised search engines.
What’s the difference between scholarly and popular article? Check it here (see infographics at bottom of the page)
Choosing the keywords and search the titles in research databases
Step-by-step instructions #1
Firstly, let’s start with the choosing of the keywords.
Think about and write your search keywords (and combinations of it) at the beginning of the your literature review. Keywords should be related to your research topic.
Example keywords: eHealth, acceptance of eHealth, eHealth in EU, eHealth in Slovenia, case study, report, eHealth and GDP
Study how to do a literature search (Video 1).
Limit the scope of your review.
Study the instructions UWF, Literature Review: Conducting and writing, here.
Install reference manager software: Mendeley or Zotero.
Study how to use it. Here are some guides, video tutorials, instructions (Slo.)
Use various search engines for academic articles / scientific monographs. I suggest the following sequence:
Firstly, search for the literature directly from the Mendeley app (see 5.), it’s the most straight-forward.
Then, try out the following search engines:
Search also the publishers’ databases: Emerald, Scopus, ISI Wos, Proquest, IGI Global, Springer Link
Use the previously chosen keywords, try different combinations, search for the articles and filter them. Keep track of all your searches and combinations of keywords! Be attentive to the articles from highly ranked journals, highly cited ones and lastly the articles from other journals.
Insert 15 articles from your language and 15 international academic articles (EN) into your Mendeley database.
List those relevant articles & references in your literature review report. Example:
Keywords: ….
Search database: ….
Repeat the text above (keywords, search database and the table) for each search you perform. The final result is a spreadsheet with a list of resources relevant for your research topic.
9. Insert the 'Bibliography' chapter at the end of your literature review report
Use Mendeley Word plugin/Insert bibliography
Deeper: reading, filtering and summarizing the resources
Now that you observed the big picture of your topic related to the digital society, it’s time to dig deeper and read what other researchers found out about it.
The most important piece of advice I’ve read about the literature review is nicely summarized in the image below. A literature review is not just some boring reading of obscurely narrow topic, which is required by your supervisor.
Reviewing scientific and academic literature is like touching the very edge of human knowledge. It is also a way to clarify your research path. You simply can not start with your doctoral dissertation if you don’t know what has already been discovered. That’s the reason why I’m trying to show you how to write a good systematic literature review.
In the last 8 years that I’m supervising theses, I’ve heard the following statement many times and it always proved wrong:
“But there is no literature about my topic!”
There is always a literature about your topic. It may appear there is no literature from various reasons (inappropriate search keywords or their combinations, different professional and scientific terminology, inappropriate search databases). So don’t worry if there are scarce resources about your research topic and consult your supervisor or mentor to help you.
I suggest you start reading the articles that already summarize research literature. You will recognize them by the title:
“Systematic review of …” or “Literature review of…” or “Meta-analysis …”
Use these terms as search keywords. Example of keywords: "A systematic literature review of CRM systems usage"
Step-by-step instructions #2
Filter the list of articles from Step-by-step instructions #1 to 15 most relevant for your research topic.
Carefully read them. Critically assess them. Test, if your sources are credible and useful. Ask yourself:
Does this article address my research topic? Which aspect of it does it cover? Each article must also pass the CRAAP test (Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, Purpose). See also (Lewis, 2018) here and evaluate your resources from CRAAP point of view.
Describe your literature review methodology and process using a flowchart.
See the example article (Hölbl, Kompara, Kamišalić, & Nemec Zlatolas, 2018) here, chapter 3 (methodology) and figure 1 (flowchart).
Prepare a summary table summarizing the related literature
See the example article (Hölbl et al., 2018) here, the table on page 8.
Table: Literature on the <insert your topic>
5. Write a short summary of each article in 1 paragraph (5-10 sentences). Example:
"Author(s )Rozman (et al.) in their article [researched | found out | discussed | experimented with]*….. (Author, 2019). ... "
6. Write the summary chapter which discusses all reviewed articles (one paragraph, 10 sentences max.).
7. Submit the literature review report to your mentor / supervisor. Congrats!
* [ ... | ... ] square brackets mean choose the appropriate word for your sentence
Show me the example!
Rozman, T., & Donath, L. (2019). The Current State of the Gamification in E-Learning. Mednarodno Inovativno Poslovanje = Journal of Innovative Business and Management, 11(3), 5–19. https://doi.org/10.32015/JIBM/2019-11-3-2, https://journal.doba.si/OJS/index.php/jimb/article/view/2019-11-3-2